


The Brass Box

by MrProphet



Category: Bagpuss
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 08:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10693689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	The Brass Box

_“Once upon a time  
Not so long ago  
There was a little girl and her name was Emily  
And she had a shop._

_“It was rather an unusual shop because it didn't sell anything  
You see, everything in that shop window was a thing that somebody had once lost  
And Emily had found  
And brought home to Bagpuss  
Emily's cat Bagpuss  
The most Important  
The most Beautiful  
The most Magical  
Saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world._

_“Well now, one day Emily found a thing  
And she brought it back to the shop  
And put it down in front of Bagpuss  
Who was in the shop window fast asleep as usual  
But then Emily said some magic words:_

_“‘Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss  
Old fat furry cat-puss  
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring  
Wake up, be bright  
Be golden and light  
Bagpuss, Oh hear what I sing.’  
“And Bagpuss was wide awake  
And when Bagpuss wakes up all his friends wake up too  
The mice on the mouse-organ woke up and stretched  
Madeleine, the rag doll  
Gabriel, the toad  
And last of all, Professor Yaffle, who was a very distinguished old woodpecker  
He climbed down off his bookend and went to see what it was that Emily had brought.”_

“It’s a box,” Professor Yaffle noted. “Rather dirty and caked in mud.”

“We will clean it!” Willie Mouse declared, brandishing a toothbrush.

“Yes, Willie Mouse,” Madeleine agreed. “I think that would be a very good idea. If you can carefully clean the dirt off the box with that brush and a little water then the others can use a cloth and the brass polish to bring up the shine.”

“But do be careful with the polish,” Yaffle added. “Try not to get any on your hands.”

Willie Mouse and Eddie Mouse scrambled down and put the brush to the top of the tin. “Brush, brush, brush,” they chanted as they pushed and pulled and gently broke off layers of caked mud and dust. Then, suddenly, they stopped.

“Ooh!” Eddie Mouse cooed. “Pretty lady.”

“Oh yes,” Professor Yaffle clucked. “A lady’s portrait in raised relief.”

The mice brushed off the rest of the dirt and then brought in a cloth which they had carefully dipped in brass polish and rubbed it around and around across the surface of the box.

“We will scrub it, we will rub it,” Janey Mouse began, and the other mice joined in with a round:

“We will scrub it, we will rub it,  
We will polish it bright, bright, bright;  
We will buff it, even clean the tough bit,  
So it won’t look a fright, fright fright.”

“So it won’t look a fright, fright, fright,” Jenny Mouse finished.

“Who is she?” Eddie Mouse asked.

“Imperium Brittanicum, Christmas 1914,” Yaffle read. “I don’t think it says.”

“She’s Princess Mary,” Gabriel said, “the daughter of King George V. That box comes from the First World War.”

“Ooh! Ooh! We know! We know about that!” the mice chorused. “We know a song about the war!”

“Really?” Madeleine asked. “Will you sing it too us?”

“Yes, yes,” the mice cried, and they scurried up to the Mouse Organ. They carefully removed a roll of music from the cabinet and dropped it into place.

Eddie Mouse took up his pose: “The marvellous, mechanical, Mouse Organ!” he announced, and the other mice began to pump. A jaunty tune began and the mice sang:

“It’s a long way to Tipperary,  
It’s a long way to go,  
It’s a long way to Tipperary,  
To the sweetest girl I know.  
Goodbye, Picadilly,  
Farewell Leicester Square,  
It’s a long, long way to Tipperary  
But my heart’s right there!”

As they sang, the mice began to march up and down on the shelf with a bouncing step.

“Stop, stop!” Gabriel begged.

“No, mice,” Madeleine pleaded. “That’s a very jolly song, but it doesn’t tell you anything about war.”

The mice looked crestfallen for a moment, but then Jenny Mouse said: “Tell us, Gabriel.”

“Yes, yes,” the mice chorused. “Tell us, tell us.”

Gabriel sighed. “Alright, I’ll tell you,” he agreed, “although I don’t care to talk of it much.” He thought for a long, hard moment and then began to pluck at the strings of his banjo. He strummed a soft tune as he recited:

These were our children who died for our lands; they were dear in our sight.  
We have only the memory left of their home-treasured sayings and laughter.  
The price of our loss shall be paid to our hands, not another's hereafter.  
Neither the Alien nor Priest shall decide on it. That is our right.  
But who shall return us the children?

At the hour the Barbarian chose to disclose his pretences,  
And raged against Man, they engaged, on the breasts that they bared for us,  
The first felon-stroke of the sword he had long-time prepared for us –  
Their bodies were all our defence while we wrought our defences.

They bought us anew with their blood, forbearing to blame us,  
Those hours which we had not made good when the Judgment o'ercame us.  
They believed us and perished for it. Our statecraft, our learning  
Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning  
Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour -  
Not since her birth has our Earth seen such worth loosed upon her.

Nor was their agony brief, or once only imposed on them.  
The wounded, the war-spent, the sick received no exemption:  
Being cured they returned and endured and achieved our redemption,  
Hopeless themselves of relief, till Death, marvelling, closed on them.

That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given  
To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven -  
By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the wires -  
To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes - to be cindered by fires -  
To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation  
From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.  
But who shall return us the children?

The mice listened in hushed awe as the toad sang on with a lump in his throat.

“Who were the ‘Barbarians’?” Eddie Mouse asked. “Was it the Germans?”

“Some people thought that, but I always thought that it meant anyone who wanted war,” Madeleine explained.

“But weren’t the Germans the bad guys?” Willie mouse asked.

“Oh. Oh, no,” Bagpuss assured him. “The Germans were just like the English or the French or the Americans. If you fetch me a thinking cap from the second drawer on the left, I can tell you all about it.”

The mice scurried up to the drawer and wrestled out a large, tin helmet, which they settled on Bagpuss’s head.

“Ah, yes,” Bagpuss said. “That takes me right back. Gabriel and I were in the same regiment during the war; the Postgate Pals. We spent months huddling in our trenches, waiting for the signal to attack, watching across No Man’s Land for the enemy to make a move and listening to the steady thump of artillery – theirs and ours – as they hurled shells at each other across the battlefield.”

As Bagpuss spoke, his thoughts ran back to that earlier time, and as always happened when Bagpuss thought hard, his thoughts began to appear as pictures above his head.

“As the year 1914 wore on, we were all tired. We’d been promised a short and glorious war, over by Christmas, but Christmas was coming and we could all see that nothing was close to being over. Most of us just wanted to go home, but there was no way we could do that while the Germans were still there on the other side, and we knew that they weren’t about to give up and leave. They were inhuman; they were monsters.

“And then, on the night before Christmas we heard a sound from the German trenches. It was the sound of voices singing; singing Christmas carols in German. What could we do but start singing our own carols in return?

“Soon we began to call over to them, and they called back; we crossed over the fristed beauty of Non Man’s Land to visit them and they to us. We met them, not as friends perhaps, but as brothers; as people just like us.

“Soon, too soon, the generals sent us back to fight against one another, but we never forgot the Christmas truce.”

“Even in war, beauty,” Yaffle remarked.

“To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,  
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,  
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,  
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica  
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,  
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this  
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,  
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,  
Which in your case you have not got. The branches  
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,  
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released  
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me  
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy  
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms  
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see  
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this  
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it  
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this  
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards  
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:  
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy  
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,  
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,  
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom  
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,  
For to-day we have naming of parts.”

Yaffle shook his heavy head. “And even in beauty, war. So many children; so much promise lost.”

The mice looked subdued.

“This box was sent as a gift to a soldier,” Gabriel explained. “Every soldier was sent one that Christmas, from a fund set up by Princess Mary.”

“It’s beautiful,” Janey Mouse said.

“Even in war, beauty,” Eddie Mouse echoed.

Bagpuss laid his head on his paws. “Enough remembering,” he sighed. “I need to sleep.”

And so the mice quickly pushed the box into the window, in case the granddaughter or grandson of an old soldier should pass by and see the box, and come in to collect it.

_“Bagpuss gave a big yawn, and settled down to sleep  
And of course when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too  
The mice were ornaments on the mouse-organ  
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls  
And Professor Yaffle was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker  
Even Bagpuss himself once he was asleep was just an old, saggy cloth cat  
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams  
But Emily loved him.”_


End file.
